This man raped this woman...and now they're telling their story together

By Natalie Cornish| 3 years ago

Most survivors of sexual assault would do anything to avoid meeting the perpetrator who caused them so much pain again — let alone agree to pen a book with them or share a public stage. But, Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger have done just that.

Elva was 16-years-old when her then boyfriend, 18-year-old Stranger raped her. He was an Australian high school exchange student living in Elva's native Iceland for a year. The pair had been dating for a month or so when the assault took place after the school's Christmas Ball where Elva tried rum for the first time. Now, after co-authoring a book on the rape together, they've taken to the TED stage to discuss the impact it has had on both their lives.

In the 19 minute TED talk, Elva talks about the moment Stranger raped her: "It was like a fairy tale, his strong arms around me, laying me in the safety of my bed. But the gratitude that I felt towards him soon turned to horror as he proceeded to take off my clothes and get on top of me.

"My head had cleared up, but my body was still too weak to fight back, and the pain was blinding. I thought I'd be severed in two. In order to stay sane, I silently counted the seconds on my alarm clock. And ever since that night, I've known that there are 7,200 seconds in two hours."

Stranger responds by saying he didn't consider the attack to be rape at the time.

"I have vague memories of the next day", he says. "The after effects of drinking, a certain hollowness that I tried to stifle. Nothing more. But I didn't show up at Thordis's door. It is important to now state that I didn't see my deed for what it was.

"The word "rape" didn't echo around my mind as it should've, and I wasn't crucifying myself with memories of the night before... To be honest, I repudiated the entire act in the days afterwards and when I was committing it. I disavowed the truth by convincing myself it was sex and not rape. And this is a lie I've felt spine-bending guilt for."

"I broke up with Thordis a couple of days later, and then saw her a number of times during the remainder of my year in Iceland, feeling a sharp stab of heavyheartedness each time. Deep down, I knew I'd done something immeasurably wrong. But without planning it, I sunk the memories deep, and then I tied a rock to them."

During this time, Elva struggled to come to terms with what had happened and — like many sexual assault survivors — blamed herself.

"Despite limping for days and crying for weeks, this incident didn't fit my ideas about rape like I'd seen on TV. Tom wasn't an armed lunatic; he was my boyfriend. And it didn't happen in a seedy alleyway, it happened in my own bed. By the time I could identify what had happened to me as rape, he had completed his exchange program and left for Australia. So I told myself it was pointless to address what had happened. And besides, it had to have been my fault, somehow.

"I was raised in a world where girls are taught that they get raped for a reason", she says. "Their skirt was too short,their smile was too wide, their breath smelled of alcohol. And I was guilty of all of those things, so the shame had to be mine. It took me years to realize that only one thing could have stopped me from being raped that night, and it wasn't my skirt, it wasn't my smile, it wasn't my childish trust. The only thing that could've stopped me from being raped that night is the man who raped me — had he stopped himself."

Stranger left Iceland and he says felt hollowness and guilt but, "didn't stand still long enough to identify the real torment caused". Then Elva — who was now 25 and "headed for a nervous breakdown" — wrote him a letter. What followed was an eight-year long email correspondence that ended in a meeting in Cape Town, where they "faced their past once and for all".

Stranger now says he sees his actions on that night as a "self-centred taking". He felt "deserving of Thordis' body...it was only me in that room making choices, nobody else."

"Don't underestimate the power of words", he says. "Saying to Thordis that I raped her changed my accord with myself, as well as with her. But most importantly, the blame transferred from Thordis to me. Far too often, the responsibility is attributed to female survivors of sexual violence, and not to the males who enact it."

While Elva says: "Despite our difficulties, this journey did result in a victorious feeling that light had triumphed over darkness, that something constructive could be built out of the ruins".

Twenty years on from the attack, Elva and Stranger have written a book together called South of Forgiveness which will be released later this year.